


Get It Right

by Twilight_Enterprises



Series: All the Linked Universe [8]
Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Legend is a softy, Survivor Guilt, Time (Linked Universe) is a Good Parent, Time shares a summary of his life story, Wild (Linked Universe)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27396403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilight_Enterprises/pseuds/Twilight_Enterprises
Summary: Wild is struggling with his fragmented memory and what he's learned from people around Hyrule about the Calamity. Legend and Time - separately - help.
Relationships: Legend & Wild (Linked Universe), Time & Wild (Linked Universe)
Series: All the Linked Universe [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823866
Comments: 2
Kudos: 121





	Get It Right

**Author's Note:**

> Not the Hero's Shade story I promised, but this definitely hints to Time's future. Also can someone write something where Wild's not having a bad time because I probably won't, thanks.

Wild had a really bad case of something Warriors diagnosed as survivor’s guilt. The constant feeling of,  _ “Why did I survive but they didn’t? Why do I deserve to live if they didn’t?”  _

A number of the others weren’t very familiar with it - yeah, they all had pretty severe trauma, but not many of them actually lost people. Not in a death sense, at least. Twilight had mentioned once that the person he was missing was alive, but there was no way of seeing her again. Wild wondered, occasionally, if that was worse. 

But while Twilight himself didn’t really feel survivor’s guilt (if he did, it either wasn’t very bad or he was just really good at handling it, the latter of which seemed rather unlikely), he said that Dusk often did, due to the number of soldiers and civilians that died when his Hyrule was first invaded. He was good at helping others handle it, but he didn’t really  _ understand. _

Warriors said he felt survivor’s guilt sometimes, when he thought about some of his soldiers in the war, but he didn’t feel it constantly the way Wild did. He understood it better than Twilight did, but it still wasn’t the same feeling - for Warriors, it was a periodically crushing feeling that usually went away after some meditation (how Warriors could meditate was beyond Wild, who had tried - and failed - several times), but for Wild, it was always there, some days as a weight on his shoulders, some days as crippling as a broken leg. Except unlike a broken leg, it couldn’t be solved with a strong potion or some good food. 

It was on one such crippling day that Legend dragged Wild just out of earshot of the camp and sat him down for the closest thing to a heart-to-heart that Legend was ever going to have. 

“I know what it’s like to feel responsible for countless deaths,” he said bluntly. 

Wild just stared at him. He sighed.

“You know how I like to joke that I’ve been on more quests than I can count on one hand? Well, one of them didn’t end so well. I had recently finished a quest, and I was looking for a change of pace, and so I took a boat and I went sailing. There was a storm. I was shipwrecked on an island, where I learned that the island’s patron god, the Windfish, was in a cursed sleep and the only way for me to leave the island, and to free its inhabitants from monsters, was to break the curse and wake the Windfish.” Here, Legend paused, clearly not enjoying the memories he was dragging up by sharing this. “So I did that. Except it turned out I was basically in the Windfish’s head the whole time. The island was just its dream, and all of the monsters were nightmares holding it in the cursed sleep. As soon as the Windfish woke up, the island - and all its inhabitants - vanished. Completely. There’s nothing left of the island or the countless people who lived on it. And the worst part? I don’t even know if any of it was real. If it wasn’t, then I have a shitload of trauma from something that never even happened. If it was… then I was responsible for the eradication of  _ so. Many. People.  _ I honestly don’t know which is worse. Trauma from a hallucination? Or accidental genocide? Who knows.” Legend sighed again. “What I do know is that there was someone on that island that I loved. Even if she wasn’t real, my feelings definitely were. And she’s gone now, and either way, it’s my fault.”

Wild stared at him for one more moment before speaking. “But at least you remember it,” he whispered. “As painful as it is, you remember it. For you, at least, it was real. But I  _ don’t  _ remember it. Hundreds of people died because of me, and I only remember about six of them. The fragments of memories that I have about it - they feel like they belong to someone else. They don’t feel like my own memories. Even memories of doing one thing back then feel different than memories of doing the same thing now. I know what happened is real, because there are physical and psychological scars in the land to prove it. But for me… it  _ doesn’t feel  _ real. If that even makes sense.”

Legend pulled him into a hug. “It makes too much sense, kiddo.”

“...If we don’t count the hundred years I was asleep, we’re the same age, Legend.”

“Fuck off and let me have this.”

“All righty then.”

Legend later made him pretend the entire conversation never happened, and expressly forbade him from ever mentioning the hug at the end to anyone. 

It helped, knowing that someone in the group understood, even if their survivor’s guilt expressed itself in different ways (Wild pulled up his hood and didn’t talk to anyone, using sign language if necessary, while Legend got especially… snippy. To put it delicately). But it wasn’t perfect, and while both of them enjoyed knowing they could talk to each other if it ever got too bad, neither of them really felt any better. It wasn’t until Wild’s survivor’s guilt decided to intensify to near-crippling levels while he was on watch that night that some of the weight was permanently lifted. 

He was sitting by the campfire, trying to remember how he loved Mipha. Because he definitely  _ had  _ loved her, but he couldn’t remember if it was platonic or romantic. Knowing that she had loved him romantically didn’t really help. In fact, it made it much, much worse. If he’d loved her platonically, had he broken her heart? Or did the Calamity strike before he could tell her that he didn’t love her the way she loved him, meaning she had died hopeful and uncertain when it came to his feelings?

He wished he could talk to her. She had been the only Champion to stick around after he finally defeated Ganon, presumably out of love, but her spirit only showed itself when he’d just died and Mipha’s Grace kicked in. He had a feeling the other heroes wouldn’t much appreciate it if he purposely died just to talk to a ghost. 

That thought felt like a knife to the chest. He’d been taken to the Shrine of Resurrection, so why hadn’t the other Champions? It’s not like he was any better than they were - in fact, Revali usually went out of his way to prove that Link wasn’t better than any of them. Wild wondered what Revali would think of him now - a reckless, pyromanic amnesiac with crippling survivor’s guilt and severe trauma.  _ He’d probably scoff.  _

It was then that a distressed moan broke the silence of the camp. 

“No… please, no… not again… I tried so hard this time - please - I don’t want to see them all die again - I was so close, I swear - no, no, NO!”

Time shot up in his bedroll, panting, before closing his eye and taking a few deep breaths. Once he’d calmed himself down enough, he stood and joined Wild next to the campfire. 

_ “Are you going to be okay?”  _ Wild signed. 

Time looked up at the full moon, then shook his head as if to clear unwanted memories, and raised his hands to sign back.  _ “I will be.”  _

_ “You were talking in your sleep, by the way.” _

_ “Let me guess, you heard all of it and you’re curious now.” _

Wild nodded.  _ “I won’t press if it’s too sensitive, but… it sounded like you’re like me.” _

Time raised an eyebrow.

_ “In Warriors’s words, ‘You have a shit ton of survivor’s guilt.’ If I’m wrong, we can forget I said anything.” _

Time glanced back at the full moon for a moment. He shook his head again, and then Wild found himself being pulled towards the older hero so he was snuggled comfortably against Time’s side. 

“You’re not wrong,” Time said hoarsely. “But you’re not entirely right, either. It’s not so much survivor’s guilt as… guilt in general. Survivor’s guilt is part of it, but a lot of it is regret.”

Wild’s brow furrowed.  _ “Regret?”  _ he signed. He felt Time nod.

“I’m the Hero of  _ Time  _ for a reason.” He sighed. “I was nine, you know, when I pulled the Master Sword from its pedestal. I think it was bigger than I was. There was no way in hell I could’ve wielded it properly, much less fight Ganondorf with it. The goddesses seemed to agree, because they sealed me in the Sacred Realm for seven years. Problem was, in pulling the Master Sword, I had broken the original seal on the Sacred Realm, inadvertently giving Ganondorf access to the Triforce, the very thing I was hoping to prevent by taking the Sword. When I woke up seven years later, I wasn’t a child anymore. Not physically, at least. But I was still only Four’s age - around sixteen. 

“When I emerged from the Temple of Time, Hyrule was in ruins. Ganondorf didn’t have a pure, unbalanced heart, so the Triforce split when he came into contact with it, but he had the Triforce of Power, and that was enough.

“Castle Town had been decimated and infested with ReDeads; Death Mountain was erupting almost constantly, and the Gorons were imprisoned to be fed to a dragon; Zora’s Domain had been frozen; the well in Kakariko Village was drained; my home village in the forest was filled with monsters; the Gerudo were disenchanted with their king, but were being brainwashed if the openly defied him; Talon had been kicked out of Lon Lon Ranch, and Malon was being treated terribly under the new management. Things slowly got better as I broke parts of the magic Ganondorf had cast on the land, but it didn’t change the fact that all of the Zoras were trapped in the ice, or that a number of Gorons had been eaten by the dragon; it didn’t save the lives that had been lost seven years earlier, on the day Ganondorf seized control of the throne; it didn’t save the only father figure I had ever known, whom Ganondorf cursed, thus beginning my journey; it didn’t save the boy from Kakariko who became so depressed he wandered into the Lost Woods, only to be transformed into a stalfos when he couldn’t find his way back out…”

Time sighed. “When I finally defeated Ganondorf, Zelda used her powers as a Sage to send me back to a day before Ganondorf attacked. She said she wanted me to live out my childhood the way I should have. Except, mentally, I was no longer a child. I had seen too much, and my innocence could never be recovered. Upon my return to that time seven years earlier, I went to the king and told him my story. Impa believed me, which was enough for the king to, as well. 

“Now, this is where it starts to get confusing. Due to my time travelling, I sort of… well, broke time. I know now that I accidentally created three timelines: the one that existed after Ganondorf had been on the throne for seven years, which I left after defeating him, the one I returned to, where nothing from the first timeline ever happened, and another one after Ganondorf had been on the throne for seven years, only in that one  _ I  _ was defeated. And unlike you, I had no Shrine of Resurrection to save my sorry ass. 

“This is the really complicated part. The first timeline, which we’ll call the adult timeline for simplicity’s sake, leads to Wind. Apparently, sometime after I defeated Ganondorf, he broke free again. But I wasn’t there anymore, so the goddesses flooded Hyrule in a desperate bid to save the people. I don’t even want to think about how many people didn’t make it to higher ground in time. What’s more is, if you think about it, everything Wind has gone through is my fault - if I had just done my job properly, his Hyrule would never have been flooded, and he’d never have needed to go on his own quest. 

“The timeline where I died, which we’ll call the downfall timeline, leads to Legend and Hyrule. Because I was… removed from the equation, shall we say, there was not a lot the Sages could do to protect Hyrule, and so they ended up sending Ganondorf into the Sacred Realm, locked away by a weak seal. I’m not sure what happened between Legend and Hyrule that allowed Ganon to return, but if I hadn’t died… then  _ Legend  _ wouldn’t have needed to go on a quest either. 

“The last timeline, which we’ll call the child timeline, is… kind of a mess. It’s the one that I come from. After returning to my childhood, I somehow ended up in a place called Termina. The people there were lovely, but the place itself, and the trauma…” Time shuddered. “I won’t talk much about it, but let’s just say I ended up in a three day time loop, and if I didn’t reset it fast enough, the world quite literally ended and everyone died. Then I’d wake up on the morning of the first day again, and I’d do everything I could to prevent the end of the world. It took me too many cycles to accomplish that. When I returned to Hyrule, I only had a short time before I found myself in Warriors’s war. It’s a bit weird being older than him now…”

“Anyway, once that was dealt with, I went back to my own Hyrule, only to be faced with a war of my own. Ganondorf apparently didn’t like the king’s sudden change of heart in regards to Gerudo-Hylian diplomacy, and had decided to attack. That was my fault, for telling the king about the adult timeline. Eventually, Ganondorf was captured and sentenced to death. I left it at that, and finally let myself fall in love with Malon in an attempt to live a somewhat normal life - as normal as it could be after everything I’d been through, that is.

“Since meeting Twilight, I’ve now learned that because Ganondorf’s execution wasn’t carried out by the Hero wielding the Blade of Evil’s Bane but by the Sages, he didn’t actually die. Instead he was banished. He returned a couple of decades later, and… from what I know of Twilight’s quest, Ganondorf was particularly cruel to him because he was my descendant, and Ganondorf remembered me. And despised me accordingly.”

Wild let out a low whistle. “Your life sucks, Old Man,” he said quietly. 

Time shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s better now - I have Malon, and the baby, and you boys. My point is this: you’re not alone, Wild. As long as we’re together, you will never be alone unless you want to be. But hey - now you know you’re not the only one who couldn’t get it right.”


End file.
